When last I posted, I was worried about hurricane Irene that was bearing down on the East Coast. We were luckier than many in Vermont
The trees that we lost all landed in the driveway and out of harm’s way and I thought the hives were unscathed until I noticed this during this past weekend.
Again, we were very lucky that the heaviest part of the bough landed on another tree as that kept everything from landing on the hives (circled in red). We’ve contacted a “tree guy” and hopefully he’ll be able to come in soon and get it out of the way before rain or wind drops it on the girls! My husband and I keep reassuring each other (as we drag, chop, split and stack yet more felled wood) that we are thankful not to have to pay for fuel for our wood stove.
Guess we’ll be singing that song with the product of this tree as well.
At any rate, it’s now time to prepare the hives for the winter. I took the honey super off to extract from the over achiever hive and am now feeding both hives sugar syrup. The goal is to feed them a thicker syrup-2 parts sugar to one part water rather than 1:1-so that they don’t have to work as hard to dehydrate and store it. I’ll feed them until about the middle of October because not only do I now want to open the hive when the ambient air is cold but I also don’t want to introduce moisture into the hive during the cold weather. From a great article entitled The Winter Cluster, “Bees consume honey to generate heat. Carbon dioxide gas and water vapor result from metabolizing honey. The warm moist air rises from the cluster hitting the cold inner cover causing condensation. This condensation drips down upon the bees as ice-cold water. The dripping water can have a negative effect upon the delicate exchange of food and warmth.” So not only do I not want to introduce any more moisture into the hive, I want to manage the natural moisture produced from metabolism. The hives are both tilted ever so slightly so that moisture will roll out the entrance, the covers are raised with glued pennies to create another area of ventilation and the brood boxes are separated by a crack large enough to allow air to circulate but too small to allow rain and snow to enter.
My party girl hive seems to have figured out its queen situation better than I was doing and is ridiculously heavy with stored honey. I never have visualized either queen-not sure I could recognize her if she was on my nose-but the amount of bees in each hive tells me that someone is laying eggs and producing strong workers. As a matter of fact, the last few times that I’ve been in the hives refilling the syrup, the guard girls have been extremely aggressive-to the point of following me back to the garage and loudly voicing their displeasure with my presence. I tried to explain that I’m only there to feed them but apparently need to brush up on my language skills as I don’t seem to be speaking “bee” clearly enough.
Oh, and one final note-sugar is ridiculously expensive when you’re going through 40 or fifty pounds every two weeks. Our club has a Facebook page and we’re tracking the prices that people are paying but it averages between $5.50-6.00/10 pounds per bag. With two hives taking in 6 gallons of syrup every 10 days-the syrup made with 40 pounds of sugar………….well, you do the math. It certainly does put into perspective paying $6 for a 12 ounce “bear” of honey.
